“Domestication is a multi-generational mutualistic relationship between humans and other organisms, in which humans take over control and care to obtain a steady supply of resources including food’.
In his book An Immense World, How Animals Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong reminds us of the concept ‘Umwelten’. Sensory bubbles in which each creature experiences even shared physical spaces in wildly different ways. The human Umwelt is limited in the sense that it feels all encompassing, but at the same time reality can be perceived in so many different ways if we try to understand the world around us. What if we can accept that cultural ideas and their implications are not normal but chosen? This photography series reveals the interpretations of Nienke in which we can look at domestication, animals and our relationship with nature.
Who we choose to be our friend and who will be our food. How we care for them, or who is neglected. How we decide how they live, eat and reproduce their animal life in all the kinds of spaces that we create. By removing color, this series aims to invite the viewer to question the multiple realities we created or can create. Acknowledging horse’s true senses, the swimming of geese in human claimed forbidden territory, the sharing of spaces. If we only look at the fat cow bottoms, we don’t see their hearts and connections as sentient beings. We are used to hide natural animals instincts so we can manipulate them. Putting the lens on those realities, we can maybe amend them.
Looking anew at the human and nonhuman animal relationships in the Anthropocene, the epoch during which humans have a substantial impact on our planet, we can imagine beyond our limited Umwelt. By acknowledging nonhuman animals’ and nature’s senses, we can transform human actions as being part of a whole. The wood uncovering itself underneath human applied paint, shows that if we just let nature be and not hide its beauty by wires, nature can cross boundaries we made, if we let it. Discovering and highlighting the blurred boundaries between wild and domesticated, commonalities and abnormalities, we can reveal nature’s true power. Using lighting and composition to draw attention to encounters that often pass us by unnoticed in everyday life, Nienke unpacks the choices, experiences and emotions that connect us all.
Every picture has a story.
Bio
Nienke van Boom is an anthropologist and visual artist based in Amsterdam. She seeks to provoke the viewer into looking anew at the Anthropocene, the epoch during which humans have a substantial impact on our planet.
Through her work, she strives to explore identity, power dynamics and cultural conceptions. As an anthropologist, she researches interconnectedness from a more-than-human perspective encompassing the relations humans have with nature and animals. By exploring themes such as domestication and power, Nienke uses lighting and composition to draw attention to encounters that often pass us by unnoticed in everyday life. Her documentary black-and-white photography unpack the choices, experiences and emotions that connect us all. Challenging our preconceived notions of animals in our society, her work ultimately invites us to take a closer, more reflective look into our own relationship with animals and the ways in which we navigate and inhabit our space with them.
The exhibition is visible from April 26th until June 9th in restaurant Herbe – Food & Drink Vegetale, Reggio Emilia.